Steeped in literary history, Clarksville looks to future

10:42 PM,
May 17, 2013

Frye Gaillard

Written by

Karen Parr-Moody
Leaf-Chronicle

The South's literary lions cast a long shadow here, which is one reason why the city hosts, each year, the Clarksville Writers' Conference.

But while Clarksville's roots include the Southern Renaissance - the literature period spanning from the 1920s until the late 1940s - the conference faces the bright sun of the future.

In 1922, at Vanderbilt University, poet Allen Tate and others founded the literary journal "The Fugitive," which championed the writings of various Southerners who would form the Southern Renaissance. Among them was Robert Penn Warren, who was born in nearby Guthrie, ...